Various systems have been developed for the creation and processing of mail. This can involve the insertion of material into an envelope or other enclosure, the sealing of the enclosure, and printing of information on the enclosure, all of which can occur at high throughput speeds. Additional processing can involve printing of postal indicia on the enclosure and the sorting and stacking of the finished mailpiece. The systems can be organized to create mailpieces in a manner that are entitled to obtain certain favorable pricing by the mail delivery services due to the ability of the carrier such as a postal service to automate processing or where the mail is presorted or organized by carrier route.
To accomplish the various steps in the processing of the mailpiece, proper alignment and orientation of the mailpiece is needed. This facilitates high speed operation of the equipment and helps avoid equipment jams and also improper preparation of the mailpiece, as, for example, where the printing on the enclosure is not properly located. Where this occurs, the mailpiece may be rejected and diverted from the mail processing stream to be recreated. Also, where the mailpiece is not rejected and recreated, improper preparation may negatively impact downstream mail processing. For example, when a delivery point bar code or other delivery or processing code cannot be read by the processing equipment due to improper positioning or alignment on the mailpiece, alternative processing such as manual sorting may be required.
Systems for the creation and processing of mail have included arrangements to provide mailpiece enclosure alignment and orientation. For example, a mailpiece rotation module has been commercially marketed by Moore's Business Forms to change mailpiece orientation from a landscape orientation to a portrait orientation with respect to the mailpiece path of travel by means of rotating the mailpiece. However, such systems do not provide skew correction for the mailpiece, nor flexibility in the manner in which the mailpiece is controlled.
The problems associated with alignment and orientation of enclosures is exacerbated with large size mailpieces. This is the case with flats mail. Flats mailpieces are mailpieces that are larger than normal sized business type mail. The dimensions of flats mail vary from country to country. Flats mail, as defined by the United States Postal Service (USPS) in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), is generally characterized by mailpieces that are more than 11½ inches long, or more than 6⅛ inches wide or more than ¼ inch thick. Among other items, these new standards require the delivery address to be located in the upper portion of flat-sized mailpieces mailed at automation, presorted, or carrier route prices. The new standards enable the USPS to process flat-size mailpieces in delivery sequence at high speeds and output the pieces in vertical bundles that are optimized for carrier delivery.